A bill that would increase the minimum distance required for picketing funerals advanced from general file Feb. 23.<\/p>\n
LB284, introduced by Omaha Sen. Bob Krist, would prohibit picketing of a funeral or memorial service within 500 feet of a cemetery, mortuary, church or other place of worship at the time of a funeral or memorial service. The current limit is 300 feet.<\/p>\n
The bill is about public safety and keeping picketers at a safe distance, Krist said. Another 200 feet would allow law enforcement to stand between funeral picketers and those attending a funeral, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cStriking the appropriate balance between the privacy rights of grieving family members and First Amendment rights is a delicate undertaking,\u201d Krist said. \u201cIncreasing this distance will allow both sides to exercise their freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln spoke in support of the bill.<\/p>\n
The right to freedom of speech is not always convenient, Avery said, but it is the most important right that we have. The bill is a modest attempt to protect families attending a funeral without injuring free speech rights, he said.<\/p>\n
The bill advanced on a 45-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill that would increase the minimum distance required for picketing funerals advanced from general file Feb. 23. LB284, introduced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-bob-krist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}